Ideal & Waste?
Amiya Dev We know that Châr Adhyây (Four Chapters) was Rabindranath’s second political novel. We also know that like Ghare-Bâire (The Home and the World), 1916, the first, it fared ill with nationalists, and that one special reason for that had been his reference to Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861-1907) in the preface in a supposedly derogatory way. We further know that Rabindranath withdrew that preface from the second edition, though it had been purportedly a ‘cue’ (‘âbhâs’) to the novel, for it related how his one-time friend and associate Brahmabandhab, Hindu-Catholic turned nationalist revolutionary, editor of the fiery daily Sandhyâ, had suddenly visited him one day in 1907 and while leaving after a little conversation turned around at the doorstep and said: ‘Rabibabu, I have fallen grievously’ (‘âmâr khub patan hayechhe’).1 Nationalism had had such hold over the readers that the spirit of the episode was utterly lost on them, the sensitivity unfelt; and even today, over a hundred years after Brahmabandhab’s death (October 27, 1907) the righteousness of 1934 might not have been fully exhausted. We may not do unwisely to recall the words that followed in the preface: ‘After he said this, he did not wait; he just left. I understood clearly then that he had come just to say these heart-rending words. By then the net of his activities had closed tightly around him; there was no chance of escape.’2 That was Rabindranath’s last meeting with him and the last conversation. Anyway, my concern is not with Châr Adhyây’s immediate reception, nor with the full implications of Brahmabandhab’s confession, whether it hadn’t also hinted at a recent falling off his noble mission of adapting Catholicism to Vedânta. Had his brand of svadeúî been in the way of his truth, cherished with great ascetic fervour in the teeth of the dominant politics of then Indian Christianity? Nor is it my concern to test Châr Adhyây out against the latter-day svadeshiî of the early 1930s, branded ‘terrorism’, that claimed a great many young idealist lives. In a moving essay, written in fifteen days of Pritilata Waddedar’s heroic suicide in 1932 after leading a successful attack on Chittagong’s European Club and sustaining a wound herself, her preceptor ‘Masterda’ recalled her with great fondness, almost sentimentally, and bid her goodbye as he would bid goodbye to Goddess Durga on the day of her immersion.3 He also recalled many others that he had inspired to brave death or incarceration across the seas. How many mothers he had bereaved of their children, what emptiness he had brought about in home after home! All for a great cause no doubt, yet was it right? Would he be forgiven? Iron-willed Surya Sen was pierced by doubt. That Tagore, who had moved away from his svadeúî involvement during the agitation over Bengal Partition (1905) before long, was pierced by more than doubt and had absolute disapproval of ‘terrorist’ violence leading to tragic waste, was once again proved by his reaction to the attempt on the Bengal Governor’s life at Darjeeling in May 1934 involving a few youths’ blighted future; but I am not going to look for its contemporary transcript in Châr Adhyây. I shall reread Châr Adhyây as a crucible of the time I have lived and the time I am living. Whoever has read Câr Adhyây a second time will not miss its design as a virtual drama in four acts. Whatever gathers is mainly by means of dialogue. The attendant narration is sharp and subtle, except in the prelude, so to speak, the prastâvanâ. The description too is sparse, as if only meant to lay the scenes. Also, the usual slow pace of a novel is missing along with the co-temporality of spaces. Novel readers will find more pleasure notwithstanding its triple perspective in Ghare-Bâire, let alone Gorâ or Jogâjog (Relations). Time-propelled, it seems to be rushing, without a hint of space coming in the way of time. Ghare-Bâire’s twin Chaturaaga (1916) too is time-bound, but being a quartet it also carries four squares of space. Though this may sound overstated, Châr Adhyây is indifferent to space. WE recall Tagore’s defence of it as a love story, which it is to a large extent, but which by no means exhausts it. The three Ela-Atin dialogues that form the bulk of the novel have a clear crescendo, ending on a merging of love and death, a kind of Liebestod. But the ‘star’ that ‘crosses’ their love is the ideal to which they are bound, no less voluntarily than involuntarily. Ela is Indranath’s recruit, sworn betrothed to the svadeœ; but Ela is also Indranath’s means of instilling the spirit of sacrifice in his boys and keeping their morale high, above all, of pulling Atin to the cause of svadeœ. Over Ela-Atin’s love is cast Indranath’s shadow in the name of svadeœ; thus what turns out to be Liebestod is the eventual strategy of liquidation: Ela must go, for she has become vulnerable through her desperate love taken advantage of by turncoat machinations. That Ela must go at Atin’s hand is Indranath at his most ‘unattached’: the sound of the distant whistle that closes the novel is the surrogate arrow cutting through the air. Tagore’s critics of the time found such fiction unfounded on svadeshî ideals. Ela would probably swallow cyanide before spilling out secrets. Ela surely would, but that is not the point. The point is: is the risk worth taking? Is she indispensable? Is anyone indispensable? Is there any room for love in the political underground? At the end of the third chapter, after Atin has been packed off to a safer underground, beyond Ela’s and through Ela’s, any other’s ken, Indranath suddenly appears on the scene and scolds Ela for thus yielding to her eros and risking their safety, saying: ‘If I could I would have straightaway killed you.’ There is an impelling dehumanisation that Rabindranath is trying to trace, arising out of the underground’s own logic. It is obvious that he is